


A Beautiful Horror

by Anonymous



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, post chapter 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 08:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15385011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Momota died choking on petals, and Maki doesn't even know who they were for.





	A Beautiful Horror

**Author's Note:**

> I love all the fluffy tropes associated with Hanahaki but I'm also such a fan of the potential for horror with it.
> 
> I'm also procrastinating all the things I should be writing right now, but that's not news.

Under better circumstances, sorting through Ouma’s blueprints would have been soothing. The sheer quantity of stupid designs meant that Maki could let her mind wander as she worked. Picking out the rare serious ones didn’t take any effort, and she didn’t have to consider how impractical the rest were.

But at that moment, the last thing she wanted was more time to think. She couldn’t get Momota out of her mind.

Execution would have been one thing. She had long since been inured to blood, strangers’ and friends’ alike. The horror of a violent death was straightforward. She could have accepted it.

But like everything else in this school, the reality had been senseless. She’d had to sit and stare at the petals clinging to his stupid wonderful goatee, daring to be beautiful as if they weren’t the things that killed him.

Death shouldn’t masquerade in prettiness and perfumes.

Maybe it was the uncertainty of the situation that got to her. They’d reached a verdict, but that had only opened the way to more questions. What had Momota been thinking when he agreed to Ouma’s scheme? Why hadn’t he told them about the disease that consumed him?

Who did he care about enough to plant seeds in his own lungs?

Maki wasn’t sure she wanted an answer. There were only two options, after all, and neither was appealing.

The simple answer was that it wasn’t her. Maybe he’d fallen for some girl outside the school, someone he couldn’t confess to before they sealed themselves away. She was probably dead now, and they had no surgeon, so the easiest course of action was to hide his condition. He was just the sort of idiot to try to keep them from worrying.

Her stomach clenched at the thought. What kind of girl would he have fallen for? Someone open, probably, someone as bright and cheerful as the sun. Maki would never have stood a chance. Really, she should have realized it far sooner.

She tried to wallow in that misery. Now probably wasn’t the time for childish notions of heartbreak, but as painful as the sensation was, she preferred it to the alternative.

Because she had confessed at the end, however indirectly. Even she knew that the cure for Hanahaki was to have your feelings returned. So if her confession wasn’t enough, if the vines kept clawing their way up his throat, the problem might have been her. Maybe what she wasn’t capable of love.

She wanted to believe that this heartbreak was proof that that wasn’t true. But really, what did she know? She could barely remember the fairytale version of love, how could she recognize the real thing? Falling for Momota had been suspiciously easy, too. It was so simple to tell herself that she loved him for the kindness he’d shown her.

So maybe she had been the one to kill him after all. Momota had trusted her, trusted in her ability to change, and she’d been a fool and believed him. Her stupidity had gotten him killed.

She realized she’d been staring at the same sheet of paper for the past five minutes. She couldn’t even make out the design. Her vision was too blurred with tears.

She scrubbed at her eyes and went back to work.

She was a murderer, an unfeeling machine, and once again she’d killed someone she cared about because they were stupid enough to have faith in her. But right now, none of that could matter. She had to focus on taking down the mastermind.

It felt good to have a target again.


End file.
